ixed and seething within him in the
queerest pudding of emotion. But all he said was:

"Come, my child; we're neither of us quite ourselves to-night. Let's go
to the drawing-room."

IX

Back in the darkness and solitude of the studio, when she was gone, he
sat down before the fire, his senses in a whirl. Why was he not just an
ordinary animal of a man that could enjoy what the gods had sent? It was
as if on a November day someone had pulled aside the sober curtains
of the sky and there in a chink had been April standing--thick white
blossom, a purple cloud, a rainbow, grass vivid green, light flaring
from one knew not where, and such a tingling passion of life on it
all as made the heart stand still! This, then, was the marvellous,
enchanting, maddening end of all that year of restlessness and wanting!
This bit of Spring suddenly given to him in the midst of Autumn. Her
lips, her eyes, her hair; her touching confidence; above all--quite
unbelievable--her love. Not really love perhaps, just childish fancy.
But on the wings of fancy this child would fly far, too far--all
wistfulness and warmth beneath that light veneer of absurd composure.

To live again--to plunge back into youth and beauty--to feel Spring once
more--to lose the sense of all being over, save just the sober jogtrot
of domestic bliss; to know, actually to know, ecstasy again, in the
love of a girl; to rediscover all that youth yearns for, and feels, and
hopes, and dreads, and loves. It was a prospect to turn the head even of
a decent man....

By just closing his eyes he could see her standing there with the
firelight glow on her red frock; could feel again that marvellous thrill
when she pressed herself against him in the half-innocent,
seducing moment when she first came in; could feel again her eyes
drawing--drawing him! She was a witch, a grey-eyed, brown-haired
witch--even unto her love of red. She had the witch's power of lighting
fever in the veins. And he simply wondered at himself, that he had not,
as she stood there in the firelight, knelt, and put his arms round her
and pressed his face against her waist. Why had he not? But he did not
want to think; the moment thought began he knew he must be torn this
way and that, tossed here and there between reason and desire, pity and
passion. Every sense struggled to keep him wrapped in the warmth and
intoxication of this discovery that he, in the full of Autumn, had
awakened love in Spring. It w